Happiness and Marriage eBook

It were better for the individual to follow his desire
and afterward repent, than to crush his desires and
repent for a lifetime under the false impression that
the universe unjustly gives to another that which
should have belonged to him.

There is just one kind of growth—­growth
in wisdom. We hear of children “who grow
up in ignorance.” We likewise hear that
the earth is square and the moon a green cheese.
Children can no more grow in ignorance than they can
grow in a dark and air-tight case. All growth,
mental, moral, spiritual or “physical,”
is by increase in in-telligence; i.e., by recognition
of more truth. All things exist in a limitless
sea of pure wisdom waiting, waiting to be understood.
As fast as this universal wisdom is used it becomes
in-told—­intelligence—­
recognized wisdom. We breathe in wisdom
and grow in intelligence. All growth, mineral,
plant, animal, man or god, conscious or unconscious—­ALL
growth is by this process. It is DESIRE that makes
us breathe. Everything cries out for more, more!—­it
cannot define always what it wants, but it
wants, with insatiable craving. It is more
wisdom the whole creation groaneth and travaileth
to get. “Give me more understanding or
I die!”—­the visible eternally cries
out to the Invisible. Desire is the ceaseless
life-urge of all things, from amoeba to archangel.
Desire is “Immanuer’—­God
with us—­God in us to will and
to do.”

CHAPTER X.

HARMONY AT HOME.

“I have recently married for the second time.
My husband is a splendid man but his grown up children
are not in harmony with me. Good people, but
a different point of view. I make no pretensions
to perfection, of course, but I do try to do the best
lean.”

This is the gist of several letters I have received
from as many different women. I will answer them
together.

When you enter a new home the matter of importance
is not whether your new relatives harmonize
with you, but whether you harmonize with them.
It is for you to do all the adjusting.

This may seem hard, but it is not. It is an easier
matter for one person to readjust her living than
for a whole family to change. The family has
not only its individual customs to hold each one, but
its family customs as well; whilst you have left your
family and have only your individual self to readjust.
If you refuse to adjust yourself, for no matter what
reason, you will act upon this family you have entered,
as a red hot iron would act upon a pan of water—­there’ll
be boil and bubble, toil and trouble and the family
will fly to pieces. All because you came in with
positive notions of your own which you insist
upon enforcing.

But if you come into the family like a lump of sugar
into a glass of water you will all, in time
melt together and the whole family will be the sweeter
and better for your coming. Whatever there is
in you which is better and sweeter than their own
ideas and customs will in time be absorbed
by the family; for what is good is ever positive to
the less good, and has a power of its own to convert;
and every human soul, if left free, will eventually
choose the good.